Above - The Lyric Theatre during the run of ''Thriller'
in April 2014 - Photo M. L.

The
Lyric Theatre opened on the 17th of December 1888
with a Comic Opera called 'Dorothy' by B.C. Stephenson. This production
had originally opened at the first Gaiety
Theatre, then transferred to the Prince
of Wales Theatre, where it achieved 817 performances, before transferring
to the Lyric for this new Theatre's opening.

The Lyric was the second Theatre to be built fronted onto the newly
constructed Shaftesbury Avenue, the first was the original Shaftesbury
Theatre which opened two months earlier in October 1888.

However,
the London Pavilion which opened in 1885
can really lay claim to being the true first Theatre on Shaftesbury
Avenue because a large bulk of the building runs along it, however,
although it had entrances on that street, its main entrance was on Piccadilly
Circus.

Right - A Programme for 'Othello' at the Lyric Theatre
in 1897 - Click to see Entire
Programme.

The
Lyric Theatre forms part of a block which includes the Apollo
Theatre and the Windmill
Theatre, but the Lyric takes up most of the frontage of the block.
The Lyric's stage door and dressing rooms
are on Great Windmill Street, next to the Windmill's main entrance,
and it used to have a Gallery entrance on Archer Street at the back
of the Theatre. The Lyric is now one of four Theatres in a row on Shaftesbury
Avenue; the others being the Apollo,
Gielgud, and Queens.

Left
- The auditorium and stage of the Lyric Theatre in 1889
- From 'London Theatres and Music Halls' by Dianna Howard - The original
is at the British
Museum.

Henry Leslie financed the building of his new Theatre
from the profits of 'Dorothy' from which he apparently made the huge
sum, at the time, of £100,000. The Theatre's Freehold is today
owned by the Theatres
Trust.

The
Lyric's Windmill Street Facade is interesting in that it is actually
the remains of a house which once stood there.

The house was built in 1766 by Dr William Hunter, who
was an anatomist, partly as a home and partly as an anatomical theatre
and museum.

Internally the house was gutted to make way for the Lyric's
dressing rooms but externally it is still much in its original form.

The rear of the house was demolished so that the Lyric's
stage could be built on the site.

On the Windmill Street Facade today there is a Blue Plaque
to commemorate the original building.

Right - The Lyric Theatre's Windmill Street Facade
showing the remains of the house that once stood there, now the Lyric's
dressing room block and stage door entrance.
M. L. 06.

The Lyric Theatre's partly cantilevered auditorium was
built on four levels, Stalls and Pit, Dress Circle, Upper Circle, and
Gallery, and had a capacity on opening of 1,306.

Today
the Gallery is called the Balcony and the Theatre seats a more modest
967. The stage at the Lyric was large for a playhouse with a width of
29' 6" and depth of 36'.

Left - An early postcard showing the Lyric and Apollo
Theatres side by side in Shaftesbury Avenue.

The
Theatre is unusual in that it still uses water to operate its iron curtain.
Originally this was pumped from the Thames to most of the Theatres and
Hotels around London's West End,
and used to hydraulically operate lifts and all manor of heavy machinery.
Today the Lyric's Iron Curtain is operated via an electric pump but
can also be operated manually by two people at a time, though it's a
very labour intensive job, and slow too.

The Lyric was also fitted with a large revolve which is
still operable today, either by a huge and ancient electric rectifier
or by hand.

Right - The Lyric Theatre during the run of 'Grab me
a Gondola' in 1958 - Courtesy Gerry Atkins.

Above Left - A Programme for 'The Medal and The Maid,'
a musical comedy with Ada Reeve and Ruth Vincent produced at the Lyric
Theatre during the end of the Forbes-Robertson season in April 1903.
And Right - A Programme for 'The Duchess Of Dantzic,' a romantic
opera by Henry Hamilton, produced at the Lyric Theatre during the end
of the Forbes-Robertson season in October 1903,
a musical version of the story of Napoleon, which ran for 236 performance.

I worked at the Lyric Theatre myself from 1975 for 4 years, and the
lighting board at that time was one of the early Rank Strand Console
Desks (CD) (Shown Right). The cabinet was fashioned from an organ
and it even had pedals and tabs to operate lighting groups. This CD
board was the two preset version which made life much easier as the
original version, used at Her Majesty's
Theatre at the same time, had organ keys instead of presets. Although
I worked there too in 1975, I was never able to fathom out how to operate
the thing. There are some photos of it here.

Right - The Lighting Console Desk at the Lyric Theatre
in 1976. Photo M.L.

The
board at the Lyric also had a speed control which was like a large accelerator
on a car. You had to push the pedal harder with your foot to create
faster lighting changes. On matinees the electricity supply was always
at a lower voltage than in the evenings so that you had to increase
the speed to attain the same lighting fade times.

Left - A Programme for 'The Gold Diggers' at the Lyric
Theatre in 1926, which ran for 180 performances.

The Console, situated at the back of the Dress Circle,
in the bar conveniently, was connected to dimmer racks in the basement
under the stage, and these consisted of huge racks of massive dimmers
operated by a large motor and clutches. When doing a fast lighting cue
you could sometimes hear the motor screaming under the stage from the
Stalls. The tabs you can see in the picture above right were used to
select which channels you wanted to move in the next lighting change,
and groups of these could be selected at once by using stops which were
to the right of the Console. When you pulled the stops out the tabs
would jump down and the whole desk would thump and 'ding' like a pinball
machine. It could take up to two minutes to set all the faders on the
presets for the next cue so that rapid lighting changes were something
of a challenge. Nowadays lighting is all done with computers and mostly
at the touch of one button, and whilst this is far more efficient and
versatile it certainly isn't anything like the adrenaline inducing operation
of a Rank Strand Console Desk.

The
Lyric's basement areas used to include an area which stretched right
up to the underneath of the pavement of Shaftesbury Avenue and housed
Crew Rooms, offices and other areas, and above were shops, but the whole
section was sold off by the London Residue Body when the GLC was abolished
and before the Freehold was given to the Theatre's Trust. This has made
further expansion of the Theatre impossible, indeed it now has less
space than it used to. Luckily the stage area was not owned by the GLC
or that might have gone too when it was abolished.

Right - Programme for 'The Flashing Stream' at the
Lyric Theatre in 1938 with Godfrey Tearle and Margaret Rawlings, which
ran for 201 performances.

The
Lyric Theatre has been home to a great many successful productions in
its time, far too many to list here, but recent successes include 'Blood
Brothers' in 1983, which won several awards and, although it only ran
for 6 months at the Lyric, went on to tour the country before a new
production arrived in the West End
at the Albery Theatre, where it
was a great success, eventually transferring to the Phoenix
where, remarkably, it ran from 1991 until 2012; 'Five Guys Named Mo'
in 1990 which ran for five years; 'Cabaret' which was a very popular
production in 2006, and 'Thriller Live' which opened in January 2009
and is still there in 2014.

Left -
The Lyric Theatre stage door and Windmill
Theatre entrance in June 1977.
The CZ Motorcycle parked by The Lyric Theatre hoardings belonged to
the late Sir Ralph Richardson who was also an avid BMW Motorcycle owner,
he was appearing at the Lyric at the time, in 'The Kingfisher'. The
other bike was mine. - Photo M.L. 1977.

The Lyric Theatre is currently run
by Nimax Theatres whose own website can be found here.